Page 87 - Vinkler, Jonatan, Ana Beguš and Marcello Potocco. Eds. 2019. Ideology in the 20th Century: Studies of literary and social discourses and practices. Koper: University of Primorska Press
P. 87
National Identification in Canada 87
with The Canadian Bookman; it is not a coincidence that two of them—
beside Roberts also Duncan Campbell Scott (1862–1947)—appeared in
the publication’s editorial boar, right before the magazine ceased to ex-
ist. But their focus on poetry with nature motifs reveals a paradoxical po-
sition, as it suggests a dependence on the tradition that contradicts the
British-Canadian nationalism after the American Revolution. Lampman
is the one Confederation Poet who inscribes the American transcenden-
talist philosophy most ambivalently and originally into his first two po-
etry collections—but Louis Dudek notes that the rest of Confederation
Poets, especially Bliss Carman and Roberts, “repeated their message of
spontaneous joy to the point of nausea” and supplied transcendentalism
in soporific quantities (Dudek 1978, 65).
The internal contradiction signalled by Confederation Poets passed
into the general formulation of the Canadian attitude towards nature as the
central element in the construction of the emerging national imaginary.6
The most distinctive in this respect are definitions provided by Northrop
Frye. In his ‘Canadian’ essays nature is given the attributes of the physical
and psychological border, which triggers a response of self-isolation in a
community facing it (Frye 1965, 830). Frye’s concept of the frontier adopt-
ed the pattern of Frederick Jackson Turner’s thesis about the American
‘Western Frontier’, as noted by Eli Mandel and later Gaile McGregor (Po-
tocco 2013, 7; McGregor 2003). The concept was indeed adapted to fit the
Canadian ‘Northern Frontier’, however, it is clear that even the Canadi-
an national myth in its most radical form incorporates the continental bi-
nome, considering it was formed in relation to the matrix originating in
the United States of America. The dichotomy of the simultaneous accept-
ance and denial of continentalism was hence first expressed in Canadian
nationalism shortly after the creation of the Canadian Confederation and
then again during the second wave of nationalism, which also included Fr-
ye’s work between the nineteen-sixties and eighties.
American or Canadian? Between Similarity and Difference
in Text and Context, the Second Take
Beside the nationalistically oriented Laurentian school of history, a school
of political-economic history asserted itself in the nineteen-thirties in
6 The imaginary of nature in the construction of the national myth—in works of the
so—called thematic criticism and Northrop Frye—asserted itself to a larger extent in
E.J. Pratt’s poetry (1881—1964) (prim. Potocco 2013), but Confederation Poets and
their contemporaries were, with their orientation towards nature, the second corner-
stone of the emerging Canadianhood.
with The Canadian Bookman; it is not a coincidence that two of them—
beside Roberts also Duncan Campbell Scott (1862–1947)—appeared in
the publication’s editorial boar, right before the magazine ceased to ex-
ist. But their focus on poetry with nature motifs reveals a paradoxical po-
sition, as it suggests a dependence on the tradition that contradicts the
British-Canadian nationalism after the American Revolution. Lampman
is the one Confederation Poet who inscribes the American transcenden-
talist philosophy most ambivalently and originally into his first two po-
etry collections—but Louis Dudek notes that the rest of Confederation
Poets, especially Bliss Carman and Roberts, “repeated their message of
spontaneous joy to the point of nausea” and supplied transcendentalism
in soporific quantities (Dudek 1978, 65).
The internal contradiction signalled by Confederation Poets passed
into the general formulation of the Canadian attitude towards nature as the
central element in the construction of the emerging national imaginary.6
The most distinctive in this respect are definitions provided by Northrop
Frye. In his ‘Canadian’ essays nature is given the attributes of the physical
and psychological border, which triggers a response of self-isolation in a
community facing it (Frye 1965, 830). Frye’s concept of the frontier adopt-
ed the pattern of Frederick Jackson Turner’s thesis about the American
‘Western Frontier’, as noted by Eli Mandel and later Gaile McGregor (Po-
tocco 2013, 7; McGregor 2003). The concept was indeed adapted to fit the
Canadian ‘Northern Frontier’, however, it is clear that even the Canadi-
an national myth in its most radical form incorporates the continental bi-
nome, considering it was formed in relation to the matrix originating in
the United States of America. The dichotomy of the simultaneous accept-
ance and denial of continentalism was hence first expressed in Canadian
nationalism shortly after the creation of the Canadian Confederation and
then again during the second wave of nationalism, which also included Fr-
ye’s work between the nineteen-sixties and eighties.
American or Canadian? Between Similarity and Difference
in Text and Context, the Second Take
Beside the nationalistically oriented Laurentian school of history, a school
of political-economic history asserted itself in the nineteen-thirties in
6 The imaginary of nature in the construction of the national myth—in works of the
so—called thematic criticism and Northrop Frye—asserted itself to a larger extent in
E.J. Pratt’s poetry (1881—1964) (prim. Potocco 2013), but Confederation Poets and
their contemporaries were, with their orientation towards nature, the second corner-
stone of the emerging Canadianhood.
